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Inland Waterways Neg

AT: Waterway Collapse

Barges are less efficient than trains and our waterways are in no need of repair

The Briefing Memo and find it full of misrepresentations and misinformation. Therefore we are providing a short list of bulleted fact checks to supplement the Committee. Below is a listing of several of the erroneous or misleading statements contained in the Briefing Memo countered by the facts:

Misrepresentation: Barges are more fuel efficient and less polluting than other means of transportation.

Fact: Barges are no more efficient than average trains and when compared with unit trains barges are significantly less efficient than trains. Since pollution is directly calculated from fuel efficiency, barges also have no advantage over trains in this respect.

Misrepresentation: Barge cost savings of $12.00 per ton over alternate overland modes

Fact: Barges are heavily subsidized; at least 90 percent of the systems costs are paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, by far the most subsidized mode of transportation. If the navigation industry paid an equivalent cost for constructing and maintaining the Inland Waterways System as the rail industry must for the rail system the Inland Waterways System users’ savings would be significantly reduced, possibly completely disappear. The navigation industry also pays nothing towards the restoration of the rivers that the system it uses has severely damaged; again this cost is paid solely by the taxpayers.

Misrepresentation: Condition of the Inland Waterways System, “nearly 60% of these facilities have been in service for longer than 50 years, while almost 40% are more than 70 years old.”

Fact: the vast majority of the locks have been rehabilitated, all of the locks on the Upper Mississippi River (UMR) have been rehabilitated within the last 20 years and have decades of useful life remaining. Each completed rehabilitation extends that useful life and allows the facility to function efficiently; the locks are not falling apart.

Misrepresentation: The lockage delays on the UMR and Illinois River are severe.

Fact: The Inland Waterways System has no scheduling system, the only major transportation system in the country that does not have a system. We schedule planes and trains but the navigation industry seems to be incapable of setting up a logical schedule system to improve its efficiency. However, because barge transportation has dropped so dramatically over the last decade or so on the UMR there has been decreased interest by the Corps of Engineers to pursue this useful measure. Also, the Benefit-Cost calculations for the proposed new 1,200 locks on the UMR are essentially negative – the completion of the locks would cause U.S. taxpayers a significant loss on their funding of the project.

Misrepresentation: The decline in the Inland Waterways Trust Fund (IWTF) to near zero creating a backlog of authorized yet unconstructed projects. Since 1986 the time to complete projects has dramatically increased.

Fact: The IWTF, which was not used to pay for Inland Waterways System projects until 1986, has never had an adequate contribution from the navigation industry to support the enormous wish list of the industry. The current $0.20 fuel tax contribution provides 50 percent of the systems funding but has not been increased for 18 years. Prior to 1986 the taxpayers fully subsidized the Inland Waterways System projects. It is the industries inability or unwillingness to provide adequate funding to the IWTF that has been the cause of the funding restrictions.

Misrepresentation: The need for approving the Inland Waterways Users Board Recapitalization Plan that would increase funding for the system to $380 million annually.

Fact: The Inland Marine Transportation System (IMTS) plan prepared by the Users Board is simply a means to increase the 90 percent subsidy of the Inland Waterways System even closer to the 100 percent that they enjoyed prior to 1986. The removal of all costs obligations for the IWTF related to dams, lock rehabilitations under $100 million (there has never been a lock rehabilitation over $100 million), and project cost overruns while offering a miserly $0.06 increase in the fuel tax is specious at best. This proposal does nothing for the country but increase the burden on U.S. taxpayers by an estimated $200 million per year.

Status quo solves for degrading waterways

Peabody, 12 – Major General, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (4/18/2012, John Peabody, “HOW RELIABILITY OF THE INLAND WATERWAY SYSTEM IMPACTS ECONOMIC COMPETITIVENESS”, http://transportation.house.gov/news/PRArticle.aspx?NewsID=1609)
PROACTIVE EFFORTS The Corps continues to be concerned about the condition of our infrastructure and is working to address it. For the last decade we have been taking several steps to address this challenging issue, to include increased efforts to document project conditions and prioritize resource allocation to the greatest needs, target resource allocation more efficiently , reducing equipment capacity, and regionalizing assets across multiple districts. These initiatives have been increasing in scope and specificity in recent years. We also undertook a case study of lock and dam construction projects, which revealed some issues for improved construction management. Subsequently, the Corps partnered with the inland waterways navigation industry in developing a longterm approach to recapitalizing our inland navigation infrastructure. Process improvements were identified and implemented to improve and strengthen our project delivery processes. These involve more accurate and risk-based cost and schedule estimating, improved program and project management, and improved contracting methods. We have initiated risk-based asset management principals in our maintenance program, but are still seeking to fully capture and quantify reliability issues with fidelity, so as to best focus our maintenance, rehabilitation and recapitalization efforts. The Corps has embarked on a Civil Works Transformation effort that is focusing on accelerated planning studies, improving methods of delivery, and developing a detailed asset management system. All of these efforts collectively will result in more effective processes to deliver Corps projects and manage them with maximum efficiency. We have already made significant progress in becoming more efficient in managing our projects, and will continue to seek ways to further improve. We have made – and will continue to make – hard decisions with regard to use of available resources. The Corps has reduced hours of operation at several of our lower use locks and is currently initiating similar actions at several other sites. We have also deferred dredging at many of our lower use inland waterways.

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